The Crafty Writer's

Check out some books by your tutor Fiona Veitch Smith … (click on the book covers to find out more)

In this final session in The Crafty Writer’s online creative writing course, I would like to leave you with some advice on how to develop your writing further. If you’re so inclined, you can join a writers’ group (for UK groups; for US and international groups) or an online critiquing group (for poetry and short stories). Be warned though, you may have to ‘shop around’ as many of these groups are filled with people who will just nod and smile and not give you constructive advice. Sometimes, you may have to pay for a professional critique to ensure you get a truly objective and constructive perspective.

Writing as a hobby

Even if you have no interest in earning money from your writing and simply do it for pleasure, it’s good to try and get some of your work published. This will give you a deadline to work towards and the added incentive to develop your writing to the best it can be.

Writing competitions

Competitions are excellent ways to develop your writing. If you get somewhere, you will be greatly encouraged that someone else thinks you have some ability. Some competitions offer critiques as prizes, which are invaluable, and if you’re lucky, even if you don’t win, one of the judges might offer you some advice. Beware though, many of these competitions ask for an administration fee. You need to decide whether it’s a legitimate fee or just a money-making enterprise. I would be loathe to pay more than £5. Competitions also give you a deadline and a reason to finally finish that masterpiece you started three years ago!

The Vanity Trap

Beware of competitions that are simply fronts for vanity publishing projects. These are particularly rife in the poetry world, where all ‘winners’ are included in a special bound volume which you have to buy (albeit at a supposedly discounted rate). I must confess I once succumbed to this, believing my poem actually had some merit, only to discover that every poet in my newsroom had also been accepted – and some of their creations were pretty dire. Even worse, one of my colleagues who was short of cash, told the competition organisers that she was happy to have her poem included in the anthology but she couldn’t afford to buy one. Not surprisingly, her poem was suddenly excluded.

Poetry Competitions

Here are a selection of poetry competitions you may wish to enter.

The Poetry Kit – an extensive list of international poetry competitions.

Short Story Competitions

Save The Short Story – a comprehensive list of short story competitions and awards. The Save the Short Story Campaign is doing a stirling job raising the profile of the genre, and the website itself is well worth a visit.

Exercise 32
Go through the competitions listed about and choose one. Commit yourself to writing something to send off. If you don’t try, you’ll never know.

Writing commerically

After a bit of success in the competition world (or even without it if you’re brimming with confidence) you may want to actually earn a bit of money from your writing. But don’t be under the illusion that you will be able to live off the proceeds; most writers earn less than the designated British minimum wage – so don’t give up the day job yet!

Magazines that publish short stories

The Short Story Website – an extensive list of magazines that publish short stories from the people behind Save the Short Story Campaign.

Magazines that publish poetry

The Poetry Kit – thanks to this fabulous resource listing magazines from around the world that publish poetry, I have no need to re-invent the wheel.

Further courses

If this course gave you a taste for writing and you would like a bit more input, why not sign up for one of these courses below:

Non-fiction writing course – another superb free online course brought to you by The Crafty Writer!

The Open University – offer short 10 week correspondence courses, mostly completed online. You will have the benefit of being able to communicate with other students in online conferences and workshops.

Well, that brings us to the end of our journey together (sniff!). I hope you’ve enjoyed this creative writing course as much as I have. It’s been a delight getting to know some of you and I hope you will continue to visit. Please drop me a line if you would like an in-depth critique of your work. But if you don’t have any cash right now, don’t worry, there’ll always be free info and friendship at The Crafty Writer. Adieu!

50 comments on “Markets, Competitions and Opportunities”

Most helpful.
Thanks a lot Fiona. This course was just the sort of thing I needed to start with. The exercises have been a lot of fun, insightful and very revealing about my capabilities. I truly appreciate your effort. I intend to work and rework these exercises. Somehow I trust it will help polish my work to a fine readers edge

These short courses have been very helpful. I’ve always wanted to write, and recently an idea was “planted” in my brain, which has developed into quite a long story after exploring all the why’s and where fore’s! The editing process is now in full swing; your course is great in helping me ‘firm up’ my characters, dialogue and punctuation.
Thank you again!

Thanks Tracey. Yes the course is quite old now and some of the links need updating. Just a matter of finding the time away from my paid job to do it (I set this up years ago when I was unemployed and had more time on my hands)! One of these days … Glad you enjoyed it though. I’m very happy that after all these years it’s still attracting students.

I want to thank you for this beautifully crafted writing course. It helped me a lot and proved to be very useful to push me out from my comfort zone. Thank you for sharing your tips and advice on writing and other useful resources. Each one of the 8 classes was totally worth it and the exercises were good too. I really loved the course.

Excellent course. I really enjoyed it and no doubt I’ll continue to go back and redo exercises when I need to. It’s difficult to find any free writing courses of substance online but this certainly didn’t disappoint. Thank you very much for all the work you put into this

Thanks a lot Fiona for building this online course. I am a literature student and a budding writer. All your sessions helped me a lot in understanding the process of writing. The course is very useful. I can now really improve my writing,pondering over building characters and stressing over use of words. Thanks for help!

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Welcome to The Crafty Writer's free online creative writing course, presented by Fiona Veitch Smith, a freelance journalist, editor, author, playwright, screenwriter and writing teacher. I hope that you'll see a dramatic improvement in the quality of your writing as you work through this course. Contact me.

What you have said:

“I am so happy to be in a creative writing course. It has always been a dream to become a GOOD WRITER. I believe that participating in this course will help me along that journey and to accomplish my goal.”

- Nancy Dixon

“I am enjoying this course very much. I have a novel going but am very unsure of myself and this is helping a lot.”

- TJ Pearson

“I have worked my way through the exercises and found them to be really helpful. The ’show don’t tell’ advice is something I always struggle with. It is beginning to make more sense now.”